Voice. When presenting virtually, your voice is your main connection with your participants. Therefore, you need to sound strong and energetic. To help make this happen, stand while presenting. It will be easier to project your voice. To keep your energy up, keep your hands free. The more your body gets involved, the more energized your voice will be. I also recommend having someone in the room when you first start conducting webinars. Having that live interaction will help keep your energy high and prevent you from talking to your computer screen. As you talk, create a verbal connection with your participants by using their names and including them in examples. Lastly, pausing is your new best friend. Pause after you emphasize a key point, take a breath and then be silent. Allow people time to process what you've told them.

Gauge attendee involvement. Because you can't see what your participants are doing, you may wonder what they're up to out there. While there is no way to keep everyone from multi-tasking, there are ways to keep track of your participants. For example, pay attention to how long it takes them to respond to a poll or question. If it's taking longer than you expect, participants may not have understood the question, they may not be paying attention, or they may not be clear on how you want them to respond (you might be taking a poll, but participants could respond via chat). Also, notice if people are consistently absent from group responses. You may call out to those individuals by name to make sure they're still listening.

Plan for interaction. Virtual audiences need some form of interaction every 60-90 seconds. While this may sound like a lot, it is not difficult to accomplish. The point is to have something visually change on the screen every 60-90 seconds. This means that you will have to include more slides with less information and more animation. It means you may have bullet points coming in one at a time, or you may choose to use annotation tools such as an arrow, highlighter or circle. It means you'll have to build in slides for interaction, include a poll, ask for feedback using emoticons or request a response via chat. All of this makes the "show" more interesting and interactive for your audience. It keeps them guessing as to what might happen next and requires them to pay attention because they never know when you might ask them for information.